Technology & Tech deals
Entry posted by MrCyber
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This second article is meant for the smaller nations among us. It is focused on the subject of Technology. I'll try to answer some of the most common questions I've heard about tech, give a few tips and also talk in depth about techdeals.
How much Technology does a nation need?
The answer to this question is two-fold:
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If your nation has less then 3000 infrastructure (or even up to 3999 infrastructure), then the answer is: You should have a maximum 50.49 tech (so you can sell it in tech deals, for tech deals, see further down in this article). Having more tech then this will mean you make less profit in tech deals. There is no need to have any tech before you hit these levels (unless you're in a war), so to optimize your nation's growth, it's better to earn lots of money with tech deals.
The exception here is if you are doing back collects, then on day 19 of your back collect you should have 75.5 tech. Having this amount of tech will improve your environment with 1 point. After you collect taxes you sell 50 of it and don't go above 50.49 again until day 19 of your next back collect. -
If your nation has 3999 infrastructure or more, then the answer is: as much as you can get your hands on.
You buy the initial 300 tech yourself (this will cost you approx $9M) and any tech thereafter you should buy through techdeals (see below for more about tech deals)
Other people say I need to start buying tech from the beginning, why do you say differently?
Well... to keep it short... those other people are wrong. There is no need for a nation with < 3000 (4000) infrastructure to have more then 50.49 tech in peace time. If you are ending up in a war, yes buy up to 300 technology if you can afford it so you can strengthen your nation, buy better airplanes, but in peacetime there is no need for it. Having more then 50.49 tech in peace time means you will make less money in tech deals and tech deals are the 2nd best way to build up your nation quickly. The best way is to get free money, but there's not a lot of that going around normally 
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What are tech deals?
To understand what tech deals are it is important that you understand that tech becomes more expensive the more you have of it, the same as infrastructure and land. Tech however has 1 unique characteristic and that is that you can send it to another nation. This makes it possible to start trading tech for money once it gets over a certain amount of money / level to buy it yourself. This level happens to be 300 tech, so any tech after 300 tech it will be cheaper to buy it via a tech deal.
To calculate technology costs, you can use the following technology cost calculator --> http://www.cn-utilities.com/techcalculator.aspx.
Why should I do tech deals?
In a typical tech deal you sell 100 tech for $3 million. You can send tech in packages of 50 at a time and since you only pay approximately 860k for 50 tech you can see that as a tech seller you make approximately $1.3M profit on every tech deal you do (these numbers do not take any discounts into account you might get from resources, bonus resources, improvements or wonders). This $1.3M profit you can invest into infrastructure, land and military for your nation to help it grow.
What are the types of tech deals?
There are basically 2 types of tech deals. They are called 1-slot deals and 3-slot deals and this refers to the number of AID slots you use consecutively for these two types of deals. I will explain them in the next sections.
First there is one other principle to understand and that is that you can only have 1 AID slot between 2 nations at a time. So if you have received $3M from a nation, you cannot send 50 tech back to that same nation until the AID slot for the $3M expires. AID slots expire after 10 days.
1-slot deals
1 slot deals are the simplest form of a tech deal. They work like this:
The tech buyer sends $3M to the tech seller's nation.
The tech seller sends 50 tech back to the tech buyer after 10 and 20 days (100 total).
There are some variations to this, for example when the person paying for the tech is not the same person as receiving the tech. You can then either arrange to follow the above procedure, or if you have a 2nd slot available you can immediately send 50 tech to the receiver and another 10 days later. This will speed up the tech deal with 10 days, but uses 1 additional AID slot for 10 days.
3-slot deals
A 3-slot deal is a unique way of doing tech deals. To do a basic 3-slot deal you need 3 tech buyers and 3 tech sellers. It works like this:
Tech buyer A sends $3M to tech seller 1
Tech buyer B sends $3M to tech seller 2
Tech buyer C sends $3M to tech seller 3
Tech seller 1 sends 50 tech to Tech buyer 2 and 3
Tech seller 2 sends 50 tech to Tech buyer 1 and 3
Tech seller 3 sends 50 tech to Tech buyer 1 and 2
By doing it this way, all buyers pay $3M, all sellers receive $3M, all sellers send 100 tech and all buyers receive 100 tech.
A 3-slot tech deal takes place on 1 day and uses 3 AID slots for 10 days total.
A variation of a 3-slot deal is to have 1 person that sends money, 1 tech dealer and 2 tech receivers. In that case it would play out like this:
Money sender sends money to Tech dealer 1
Tech dealer 1 sends 50 tech to Tech receiver A and B
For this scenario the money sender and tech receivers all use 1 AID slot, and the tech seller still uses 3 (1 to receive money, 2 to send tech)
Are there ways to improve my profit for a tech deal?
Yes there are several ways to improve your profit for a tech deal.
The simplest way is through resources:
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Gold
The gold resource will give you a 5% discount on your technology purchase costs -
Microchips
The Microchips bonus resource will give you an 8% discount on your technology purchase costs.
Going after the Microchips bonus resource is only profitable however if you have Lead or Oil as one of your native resources. Both of those resources have a negative environment impact if you import them. Your environment level will have impact on the amount of money you will get out of your tax collections. Importing both oil and lead will reduce your tax collections so much that the extra discount you get on technology is washed away by the decrease in tax income.
The 2nd way is by buying tech in the correct order to take advantage of the various cost jumps that are build into the game. Assuming you start < 0.5 tech you buy tech in the following order:
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4.5 tech
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10 tech
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10 tech
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5 tech
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10 tech
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10 tech
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0.5 tech
This will get you to a max of 50.49 tech (exactly 50 if you started at 0) If you start at more then 0.49 tech, buy up to the next closest step first, then continue with the list.
The next way to reduce technology costs is to get 2 University improvements. Each University improvement will give you a 10% discount on technology cost. However to get a University improvement you will first need 3 School improvements, so this means that you will need at least 6000 citizens to be able to get a University improvement (your first 2 improvements should ALWAYS be Harbor and Foreign Ministry, no exceptions). I would also not recommend to get Schools and Universities as the next improvements you buy. There are much better improvements to buy that will increase your tax income more then the Universities give you technology discount, so follow the standard improvement order from your alliance and stick to it.
The last, and most expensive way to reduce technology costs is to purchase wonders that give you a discount on technology. Since you will typically not start buying wonders until you reach 3000 infrastructure and this is around the level that you will stop selling technology, this is not a viable option as it will be too expensive to get a return on your investment.
Who can I do tech deals with?
Most large nations are more then happy to buy your tech, however it is best to arrange tech deals through trusted alliances so you can easily get repeat business. If you are currently in an alliance, chances are that your alliance has a tech selling or tech buying program, so check with your alliance. If you're not in an alliance you might consider joining the Citadel Trading Company (CTC). The CTC is not an alliance, but a business venture where you can sell all the tech you can produce to trusted nations in several large alliances while being under the protection of these alliances. To learn more about the CTC, check them out at http://www.cn-citadel.com.
If your alliance has a lot of small nations, your alliance should consider selling tech alliance wide to a larger alliance. The Grämlins for example have a large tech import program and we are always looking for more people to sell us tech. To learn more about this, visit our forums at http://www.cn-gremlins.com or come talk to one of us on IRC in #gremlins on the Coldfront servers.
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